Robert Raikes by Sir Thomas Brock

Robert Raikes. Sir Thomas Brock. Bronze. 1880. Victoria Embankment Gardens, London. According to Leslie Stephen's entry for Robert Raikes (1735-1811) in the 63-volume first edition of Dictionary of National Biography, the social reformer often credited with originating the Sunday School Movement, was born at Gloucester on 14 September 1735, the son of Robert Raikes, who founded The Gloucester Journal, “one of the
oldest country newspapers. . . .
Robert[, who] succeeded to the Gloucester business
on his father's death, . . . was
an active and benevolent person, and in 1768
inserted in his paper an appeal on behalf of
the prisoners in Gloucester. The gaols were
marked by the abuses soon afterwards exposed by Howard.
No allowance was made for the support of minor offenders, and Raikes
says that some of them would have been
starved but for 'the humanity of the felons,'
who gave up part of their rations.”

Concerned with the lack of training or education for children, he began to promote Sunday schools.

Commentary by Leslie Stephen in The Dictionary of National Biography

Various accounts are given of the circumstances which led to the action which made him famous.
He mentions an interview (traditionally
placed in St. Catherine's meadows) with a
woman who pointed out a crowd of idle ragamuffins.
He is also said to have taken a hint
from a dissenter named William King, who had set up a Sunday school at Dursley. Cynics
reported that Raikes made up his newspaper on Sundays, and was annoyed by the
interruption of noisy children outside when he was reading his proofs. In any case, he spoke to the curate of a neighbouring parish,
Thomas Stock (1749-1803), who had started a Sunday school at Ashbury, Berkshire. Raikes and Stock engaged a woman as teacher
of a school, Raikes paying her a shilling and Stock sixpence weekly. Stock drew up the rules. Raikes afterwards set up a school in his
own parish, St. Mary le Crypt, to which he then confined his attention. Controversy has arisen as to the share of merit due to Raikes
and Stock. It must no doubt have occurred to many people to teach children on Sunday. Among Raikes's predecessors are generally
mentioned Cardinal Borromeo (1538-1584), Joseph Alleine, Hannah Ball,
and Theophilus Lindsey. Raikes's suggestion fell in with a growing sense
of the need for schools, and became the starting-point of a very active movement.

His first school was opened in July 1780. In November 1783 he inserted in his paper a short notice of its success, without mentioning
his own name. Many inquiries were consequently addressed to him. An answer
which he had sent to a Colonel Townley of Sheffield was published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1784, and a panegyric, giving
a portrait and an account of his proceedings,
was in the European Magazine of November
1788. The plan had been quickly taken up at Leeds and elsewhere. Raikes's friend, Samuel Glasse, preached a sermon in 1786 at Painswick, Gloucestershire, on behalf of the schools there, and stated in a note that two hundred thousand children were already being taught in England. The bishops of
Chester and Salisbury (Porteus and Shute Barrington) gave him their approval. William Fox , who had been trying to start a larger system, thought Raikes's plan more practicable, and, after consulting him, set up in August 1785 a London society for the establishment of Sunday schools. Jonas Hanway and Henry Thornton were members of the original committee, and ten years later the society had sixty-five thousand scholars.

Wesley remarks in his journal of
14 July 1784 that he finds these schools springing up wherever he goes. He published a letter upon them next year in the
Arminian Magazine, and did much to encourage them
among his followers. They were introduced into Wales by Thomas Charles of Bala, in 1789, and spread into Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. They had attracted attention outside of the churches. Adam Smith, according to one of
Raikes's letters in 1787 (GREGORY, p. 107), declared that no plan so simple and promising for the improvement of manners had been devised since the days of the apostles. At Christmas 1787 Raikes was admitted to an interview with Queen Charlotte, who spoke favourably of the plan to Mrs. Trimmer,
and Mrs. Trimmer started schools, which were graciously visited by George III. Hannah More followed Mrs. Trimmer's example by starting similar schools in Somerset in
1789. . . .

Raikes . . . died at Gloucester, 5 April 1811, and was buried in the
church of St. Mary le Crypt, where there are
monuments to him and his parents. His
widow died, aged 85, on 9 March 1828. They
had two sons and six daughters.

Raikes is accused of excessive vanity; but
he seems to have been a thoroughly worthy
man. His merit in the Sunday-school movement
appears to have been not so much in
making any very novel suggestion as in
using his position to spread a knowledge of
a plan for cheap schools which was adapted
to the wants of the day. He very soon came
to be regarded as the 'founder of Sunday
schools,' but does not appear to have himself
ignored the claims of his co-operators. A
'jubilee' was held in 1831, at the suggestion of
James Montgomery, to celebrate the
fiftieth anniversary of the movement (really
the fifty-first), when it was said that there
were 1,250,000 scholars and one hundred
thousand teachers in Great Britain. A
centenary celebration was also held in 1880,
when Lord Shaftesbury unveiled at Gloucester the model of a statue of Raikes, intended to be placed in the cathedral. It has
never been executed. Another statue was
erected upon the Victoria Embankment.

Photographs and captions by
Robert Freidus.
Formatting by George P. Landow.
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